Continuing the discussion of Confederate records, another major portion of material in Record Group 109, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, includes records about Confederate prisoners of war. Of particular note, these are actually records created by Union military prisons, compiled or maintained by the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners in the U.S. War … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: Confederate prisoner of war records
Confederate records that survived the Civil War cover a variety of aspects and functions of both the Confederate government and its armed forces. One of the major components of the War Department Collection of Confederate Records includes records of various military hospitals that were established in several Southern states during the war. Administered by the Confederate … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: Confederate hospital records
Since we are about to embark on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War--various activities commemorating events leading up to the war have already taken place around the country since January--it seems useful to highlight some of the major records we have available at the National Archives. Let's start with an overview of Confederate records. … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: An overview of Confederate Records
Have you ever looked at a Civil War pension file and wondered, what does this all REALLY mean? More specifically, have you ever tried to figure out what each document or slip of paper actually was, where it came from, and what relevance it had to the file as a whole? Believe it or not, … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: How to make sense out of a Civil War pension file…with some online help!
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the Department of War and the Department of the Navy both published national lists of casualties for the U.S. Army and Army Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The intent was to disseminate the information to the general public in a timely manner, for the … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: Digitized World War II casualties lists on ARC
As a way to wrap up the discussion about records relating to military service in the 20th century, it would be a good idea to check out the electronic records available on NARA's Access to Archival Databases (AAD) . AAD is an online resource available on the NARA web site at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/ and contains a … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: Check out AAD for 20th century military databases.
As I've been reviewing pertinent records over the past several weeks relating to 20th-century military service, it's finally time to say a few words about those that document the Vietnam War. Instead of focusing on any one specific series, a general overview seems to offer the best approach to highlight these records, especially since they have … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: An overview of Vietnam War-era records
While World War II usually dominates attention as the largest and most important U.S. war of the 20th century, let's also consider that perennially "forgotten" conflict of the early 1950s, the Korean War. The participation of U.S. military units in the Korean War is also well documented in Record Group 407, Records of the Adjutant General's … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: Korean War-era Command Reports
Continuing the theme of my last post, which introduced alternate ways to research 20th century military service (to compensate for the personnel files lost in the 1973 file at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis), this time we'll look at two essential series of unit records relating to World War II. By far … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: World War II Records at College Park
A recent post in the "NARA Coast to Coast" blog here on NARAtions (see Pay Day for Some World War I Military Personnel Records from September 27, 2010) highlighted problems in researching 20th century military service that resulted from the July 12, 1973 fire at the Military Personnel Record Center in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to … Continue reading Family Tree Friday: Using military unit and operational records–World War I
